Orangerie, Place de la Concorde, Champs Elysees, BateauBus

 By Saturday morning, Jane decided she had better have a day of rest since she had been up all night with a bug of some kind.  After morning coffee, Sherri and I set off to see what kind of trouble we could get into.

When we open the doors to rue Cler, we are always greeted by beautiful flowers:

First stop was the Orangerie situated in the Tuileries Gardens.  The Orangerie, or an orangerie, was originally a greenhouse for growing orange trees for the Tuileries Palace.  Now, the museum holds eight large panels of Claude Monet’s lily pond paintings.  I have been drawn to Monet’s lily pond paintings since I was a child in St Louis, Missouri.  The St. Louis Art Museum has a large panel that I would be sure to visit each time we went for field trips—along with rushing with my classmates to see the gasp mummy’s exposed toe in the Egyptian exhibit!

Also on display at the Orangerie are paintings donated from the private collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume.  There is a wall full of Renoirs, in addition to a few Impressionist works.  The collection includes works from Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Sisley, Mondigliani, Soutaine, and Utrillo. 

Renoir

Monet

Sisley

  Cézanne

 Matisse

Picasso

Utrillo

Among my favorite are those of Marie Laurencin, and before we get to those, my camera battery dies.  Of course, I did not have my backup camera, so the miracle of the smartphone became my means of recording sights.

I also get in trouble for photographing Rodin’s sculpture Thought which is part of a special exhibit—not like I haven’t photographed it before and not like doing so again is going to hurt the marble!

Once outside again, Sherri and I cross Place de la Concorde, remarking on the obelisk and the plaque marking the site of the guillotine during the French Revolution.  

As we crossed to begin a walk up the Champs Elysees, we did contemplate taking a pedicab but decided the operators were a little too sketchy, especially once we saw the petition scam artists hanging about with the drivers.  As a young woman with a clipboard began to approach us, I saw someone waving her off, and several people moved to another area.

A street market cluttered the sidewalk, and I had a new Wallace Fountain sighting.  We watched a line of people waiting to be let in to some well-guarded place and discovered later that they were going to see the gardens at the President of France’s residence.

We stopped for lunch pretty much at the first place we saw called Unisex.  Very weird but very good drinks.  I had a Sazerac and Sherri had a Pims Cup.

 This is the inside dining room.  We ate on the sidewalk.

We wandered up the street and crossed to look at the displays at Louis Vitton.  Interestingly, only so many people are allowed in the store at a time. 

We also came across a shop that is having a going out-of-business sale.  To say that the store was jam-packed is an understatement, but we went in anyway, and Sherri found a nice light jacket I could wear for teaching at 50% off!

Since it is late afternoon, we start back to the apartment to check on Jane.  Before the métro reaches our final destination, I pull Sherri off the train, and we head for the BateauBus for a tour of Paris by the river.  Sherri wasn’t really ready to go back to the apartment, so I said what the heck.

Crossing Pont Alexandre, this little girl was having a bit of a fit.  She ends up running across the bridge well ahead of her parents.  Very scarey, but we saw that they finally caught her.

The BateauBus is a hop-on hop-off way to sightsee, but instead of bus or métro, you take a boat on the river Seine.  We got on at Pont Alexandre III and would eventually get off at La Tour Eiffel.  

The woman at the ticket booth said you can only stay one for two hours, but it was three hours before we took the whole trip plus an extra stop.  The back of the boat is a good spot for picture-taking, so Sherri staked out her spot, and I sat inside, unfortunately next to a couple of out-of-control young boys.  

The second half of the trip, I joined Sherri at the back of the boat.  We noticed that several of the bridges are now being infested with love-locks now that the Pont des Arts has had most all of the locks removed. These locks are really not attractive and do damage.  It does not help to see that souvenir shops and the bookquistes keep selling them.

Toward the end of our excursion, I texted Jane to see how she was doing.  She was feeling better, so we planned to meet at Le Petit Cler for dinner.  It took Sherri and I longer than expected, so Jane was already well into her meal when we got there, and we had to wait for a vacant table.  Our waiter did a double-take when he saw us because he recognized us from two days before.  This little café is very popular, and a lot of people were gathering to see a soccer match on the television.

After dinner, we ascended the stairs to the apartment.

Jour 8—Le lift ne marche pas.